Description of Program

The Integrated Science, Business, and Technology (ISBT) major leads to a bachelor's degree and provides a curriculum in which the study of science, technology, mathematics, business, and the liberal arts are integrated to develop a graduate who is uniquely qualified to take an active leadership role in arriving at scientifically and economically informed solutions to real-world problems. Because effective solutions to complex real-world problems require multidisciplinary teams, the major aims to provide the students with a familiarity with and facility in the use of tools and processes of team-building and project management. This major will build on La Salle’s strengths by making the connectionsamong the ethical and moral dimensions as well as the scientific and business aspects of these real-world problems. An important attribute of ISBT graduates will be their ability to acquire quickly the necessary information and knowledge relevant to a specific problem context.

Three areas of concentration for in-depth exploration have been chosen in consultation with the ISBT Advisory Board. They are Biotechnology, Information and Knowledge Management (IKM), and Energy and Natural Resources (ENR).

The Biotechnology concentration will prepare students for employment in diagnostic, pharmaceutical, medical, food, agricultural, and other types of biotechnology-based companies. Courses in this concentration will provide students with experience in protein chemistry, tissue culture, microbiology, and molecular biology. The students also will gain a fundamental understanding of the regulations and procedures used by agencies that regulate the biotechnology industry. Specific regulations to be covered will include GMP, environmental issues (waste disposal, pollution, etc.), patent considerations, and biosafety.

Graduates of the ISBT IKM concentration are “Knowledge Liaisons” who facilitate the flow of information throughout the entire corporate organization. Building on a technical foundation that includes an understanding of data collection methods, database structure, system architecture, and data-mining applications, the Knowledge Liaison shepherds information among corporate divisions, departments, individuals, and the corporate knowledge repository.

The ISBT ENR concentration provides a broad understanding of energy and natural resource supply and use. Topics to be emphasized include sustainable energy development, efficiency, natural resource management, environmental concerns, related government policy, risk assessment, and the effect of deregulation on the energy industry. This area of study will address supply chain management in terms of the use and disposal of natural resources. Energy production will be analyzed to include the consideration of the raw materials necessary for production as well as the consideration of the waste and by-products resulting from energy production. The technical and economic aspects and the human benefits resulting from this area will be studied.